Why I Won’t Renew Hulu Plus

I recently signed up for a one-month Hulu Plus trial by linking my Facebook account. I had high hopes that Hulu would let me finally cancel cable, but so far I’ve been very disappointed. It looks like we’re still a long way from straightforward and logical TV and movie streaming options; the content owners and distributors really need to get their act together to make this less confusing and frustrating for the consumer.

Some shows are only available through the content owner’s website, mainly CBS: Amazing Race, The Good Wife

Some are only available with a paid subscription to another service, such as HBO and Showtime: United States of Tara, In Treatment, Treme, the list goes on and on here.

Some shows can’t be found at all: Homicide

I thought one benefit of Hulu Plus would be access to prior seasons, but several shows appear to only have the most recent season listed: Modern Family, Parenthood, Friday Night Lights

The Hulu Plus app on our Sony TV stinks. If you search for a show, there isn’t a way to modify or cancel that search, you have to restart the app. Once you find a show, it isn’t obvious which season and episode you’re opening. I haven’t been able to figure out how to play or queue an entire season, starting from the first episode.

As of now, I don’t see a good reason for continuing Hulu Plus at $7.99 a month. I’m standing on the sidelines and sticking with Netflix discs until the networks, studios, and distributors can all start pulling together.

2 Comments

I just bought a Roku XS which has access to Hulu Plus among other things, their interpretation is much better than that of my Sony Bravis, plus they have many other options and regular updates to their software, which Sony doesn’t seem to do as often.

Roku.com is showing HBO GO, or something like that as ‘Coming Soon’ on their website, which would seem to solve your issues about some of the missing shows.

Worth taking a gander, otherwise depending on your area, check out a good HD Antenna, thats my next stop on dropping the entertainment bills journey.

Hello Mr. Carter! Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll take a look at the Roku. I’ve also been thinking of a Boxee box, but don’t have high hopes it will help me cut the cord either.

I did a little bit of research on over the air HD signals, and it looks like options are limited for our area. We are in a fairly densely populated suburb, but live in a bowl with large hills surrounding us, so signals aren’t very strong. The search continues!